Sorting numbers with multiple decimals in bash

Question

In bash using sort with the -n option doesn\'t give me the expected result.

$ cat numbers | sort -n
1.0
1.1
1.11.4
1.         


        

Answer 1

You need the -t. flag to specify '.' as your separator, and the multiple key position specifiers handles the progressively longer/deeper numbers. I still don't quite understand exactly how it works, but it works ...

 sort -t. -k 1,1n -k 2,2n -k 3,3n -k 4,4n numbers

or

 cat numbers | sort -t. -k 1,1n -k 2,2n -k 3,3n -k 4,4n